Support

As previously communicated (v6.9 — April 2, 2021), Prime Video is changing our content delivery SLAs to better align with studio production cycles, specifically for Fast Track content. New SLAs will be in effect on July 5, 2021. Beginning on this date, the new values of SDP and SWP can be used. More information about the new delivery SLAs is available in the support site under Availability and delivery in Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

Content partners can deliver MEC files with a specific md:Profile value which relaxes parsing validations to allow images to be communicated independently of metadata. Additionally, we have enabled localized image parsing support for the MMC spec. Content partners can now ingest localized images by providing purpose, language, and region values in MMC. Images can be delivered independently of other assets or as part of the complete asset package.

For more information, see Partial image delivery.

Prime Video is changing our content delivery SLAs to better align with studio production cycles, specifically for Fast Track content. Please note that these changes aren't in effect yet and are still pending, but we want to give early notification to our content partners of this upcoming change. Please don't start using the new values (SDP and SWP) until our next update or your Partner Operations Manager alerts you to do so. You should begin scoping any changes that need to occur to make this change. These changes will go into effect later in Q2 2021.

Review new delivery SLAs

As of January 4, 2021, Video Central has extended currency mapping to include a default currency for all territories. A table of the full mapping between territories and default currencies is available on the support site. Previously, Prime Video has only accepted TVOD avails for territories that have a default currency defined in Video Central - if a provider submitted avails for a territory without a default currency mapped, this would have lead to a failed submission.

This change will add a default currency to EMA 1.7+ (if currency isn't provided) and EMA 1.6 avails.

On January 31, 2021, we will update our default logic to align with EMA avails industry standards for undeclared time zones. For specific territories impacted by this change listed below, the easternmost time zone of the territory for which content is being availed will be used as the default assumption. The default for all other territories will not change. Please make any adjustments within your content rights scheduling as needed.

Video Central released a specification change which allows for fallback logic to be extended on a per language basis to extract metadata from regionalized LocalizedInfo blocks when there is only one block for the given language.

The LocalizedInfo blocks are now considered language-by-language with the following logic:

• If there are no regionalized LocalizedInfo blocks and one regionless LocalizedInfo block for a language, we extract the metadata from the regionless block.
• If there is only one regionalized LocalizedInfo block for a language, we extract the metadata from the regionalized block.
• If there is more than one regionalized LocalizedInfo block for a language, we require a regionless block for that language. Metadata is extracted from the regionless block. The regionless block is required because regionalized metadata isn't supported by Video Central.

Previously, Video Central introduced validations for global territory artwork deliveries, one of which verifies that a regionless LocalizedInfo block is provided for each language specified in regionalized LocalizedInfo blocks containing images. This ensures that we have metadata for each language with images. The previous parsing logic for global territory artwork deliveries didn't meet content partner expectations — it required one regionless block per language even though we should have been able to extract data from a single regionalized block provided for its respective language.

The following example illustrates how you can now implement the specification (the regionalized LocalizedInfo block with language="fr-FR" is now parsed for metadata):

<md:LocalizedInfo language="en-US">
    <md:TitleDisplayUnlimited>Regionless-EN_locale-Title</md:TitleDisplayUnlimited>
    <md:TitleSort></md:TitleSort>
    <md:ArtReference resolution="1600X1200" purpose="BOXART">Regionless-EN_locale-boxart.png</md:ArtReference>
    <md:ArtReference resolution="1920X1080" purpose="cover">Regionless-EN_locale-cover.png</md:ArtReference>
    <md:Summary190>Regionless-EN_locale-Summary190</md:Summary190>
    <md:Summary400>Regionless-EN_locale-Summary400</md:Summary400>
</md:LocalizedInfo>
<md:LocalizedInfo language="fr-FR">
    <md:TitleDisplayUnlimited>FR_region-FR_locale-Title</md:TitleDisplayUnlimited>
    <md:TitleSort></md:TitleSort>
    <md:ArtReference resolution="1600X1200" purpose="BOXART">FR_region-FR_locale-boxart.png</md:ArtReference>
    <md:ArtReference resolution="1920X1080" purpose="cover">FR_region-FR_locale-cover.png</md:ArtReference>
    <md:Summary190>FR_region-FR_locale-Summary190</md:Summary190>
    <md:Summary400>FR_region-FR_locale-Summary190</md:Summary400>
    <md:Region>
        <md:country>FR</md:country>
    </md:Region>
</md:LocalizedInfo>
<md:LocalizedInfo language="ja-JP">
    <md:TitleDisplayUnlimited>JP_region-JP_locale-Title</md:TitleDisplayUnlimited>
    <md:TitleSort></md:TitleSort>
    <md:ArtReference resolution="1600X1200" purpose="BOXART">JP_region-JP_locale-boxart.png</md:ArtReference>
    <md:ArtReference resolution="1920X1080" purpose="cover">JP_region-JP_locale-cover.png</md:ArtReference>
    <md:Summary190>JP_region-JP_locale-Summary190</md:Summary190>
    <md:Summary400>JP_region-JP_locale-Summary400</md:Summary400>
    <md:Region>
        <md:country>JP</md:country>
    </md:Region>
</md:LocalizedInfo>
<md:LocalizedInfo language="ja-JP">
    <md:TitleDisplayUnlimited>FR_region-JP_locale-Title</md:TitleDisplayUnlimited>
    <md:TitleSort></md:TitleSort>
    <md:ArtReference resolution="1600X1200" purpose="BOXART">FR_region-JP_locale-boxart.png</md:ArtReference>
    <md:ArtReference resolution="1920X1080" purpose="cover">FR_region-JP_locale-cover.png</md:ArtReference>
    <md:Summary190>FR_region-JP_locale-Summary190</md:Summary190>
    <md:Summary400>FR_region-JP_locale-Summary400</md:Summary400>
    <md:Region>
        <md:country>FR</md:country>
    </md:Region>
</md:LocalizedInfo>
<md:LocalizedInfo language="ja-JP">
    <md:TitleDisplayUnlimited>Regionless-JP_locale-Title</md:TitleDisplayUnlimited>
    <md:TitleSort></md:TitleSort>
    <md:ArtReference resolution="1600X1200" purpose="BOXART">Regionless-JP_locale-boxart.png</md:ArtReference>
    <md:ArtReference resolution="1920X1080" purpose="cover">Regionless-JP_locale-cover.png</md:ArtReference>
    <md:Summary190>Regionless-JP_locale-Summary190</md:Summary190>
    <md:Summary400>Regionless-JP_locale-Summary400</md:Summary400>
</md:LocalizedInfo>
<md:LocalizedInfo language="de-DE">
    <md:TitleDisplayUnlimited>DE_region-DE_locale-Title</md:TitleDisplayUnlimited>
    <md:TitleSort></md:TitleSort>
    <md:ArtReference resolution="1600X1200" purpose="BOXART">DE_region-DE_locale-boxart.png</md:ArtReference>
    <md:ArtReference resolution="1920X1080" purpose="cover">DE_region-DE_locale-cover.png</md:ArtReference>
    <md:Summary190>DE_region-DE_locale-Summary190</md:Summary190>
    <md:Summary400>DE_region-DE_locale-Summary400</md:Summary400>
    <md:Region>
        <md:country>DE</md:country>
    </md:Region>
</md:LocalizedInfo>
<md:LocalizedInfo language="de-DE">
    <md:TitleDisplayUnlimited>US_region-DE_locale-Title</md:TitleDisplayUnlimited>
    <md:TitleSort></md:TitleSort>
    <md:ArtReference resolution="1600X1200" purpose="BOXART">US_region-DE_locale-boxart.png</md:ArtReference>
    <md:ArtReference resolution="1920X1080" purpose="cover">US_region-DE_locale-cover.png</md:ArtReference>
    <md:Summary190>US_region-DE_locale-Summary190</md:Summary190>
    <md:Summary400>US_region-DE_locale-Summary400</md:Summary400>
    <md:Region>
        <md:country>US</md:country>
    </md:Region>
</md:LocalizedInfo>

• On July 13, 2020, Video Central released a specification change allowing content partners to deliver localized images to multiple Regions within the same LocalizedInfo block. This eliminates creating a LocalizedInfo block for each Region. Partners can now allow none to many Regions in LocalizedInfo, aligning with the industry standard for MEC specification.

  Please see the following current and former examples:

  Current

  <LocalizedInfo language="es-419" xmlns="http://www.movielabs.com/schema/md/v2.5/md">
     <TitleDisplayUnlimited>Title</TitleDisplayUnlimited>
     <TitleSort />
     <ArtReference resolution="400x300" purpose="cover">cover.jpg</ArtReference>
     <Summary190>Summary190</Summary190>
     <Summary400>Summary400</Summary400>
     <Genre id="av_genre_drama" />
     <Region>
          <country>AR</country>
     </Region>
     <Region>
          <country>BO</country>
     </Region>
</LocalizedInfo>


  Former

  <LocalizedInfo language="es-419" xmlns="http://www.movielabs.com/schema/md/v2.5/md">
     <TitleDisplayUnlimited>Title</TitleDisplayUnlimited>
     <TitleSort />
     <ArtReference resolution="400x300" purpose="cover">cover.jpg</ArtReference>
     <Summary190>Summary190</Summary190>
     <Summary400>Summary400</Summary400>
     <Genre id="av_genre_drama" />
     <Region>
          <country>AR</country>
     </Region>
</LocalizedInfo>
<LocalizedInfo language="es-419" xmlns="http://www.movielabs.com/schema/md/v2.5/md">
     <TitleDisplayUnlimited>Title</TitleDisplayUnlimited>
     <TitleSort />
     <ArtReference resolution="400x300" purpose="cover">cover.jpg</ArtReference>
     <Summary190>Summary190</Summary190>
     <Summary400>Summary400</Summary400>
     <Genre id="av_genre_drama" />
     <Region>
          <country>BO</country>
     </Region>
</LocalizedInfo>


• Per the requirements of the Brazilian Ministry of Justice, Video Central released a spec change that requires all partners who have titles submitted to BR (Brazil) to supply a ratings descriptor and applicable ratings reason. This applies to both currently availed titles and new deliveries. If the MEC ratings descriptor or ratings value is missing for BR, submissions will be blocked until the proper values are added. Please note that BR ratings values have also been updated. For more information, see Ratings, languages, and genres.

• Chinese language updates: Updated ingest specifications to clarify expectations for Chinese language deliveries for metadata, timed text, and spoken audio languages.

• Metadata Updates: CountryOfOrigin is now a required field for all metadata specs (i.e. Amazon XML, Amazon XLS, MovieLabs MEC).

• Localization of support content in Spanish, French, Italian, German, Japanese, and Brazilian-Portuguese.
• 4K UHD Title Metadata in US, UK, DE, and JP: New naming convention for 4K UHD title metadata.
• MEC Updates: We’ve clarified that at least one instance of ReleaseHistory is required for each submission with "ReleaseType = Original". This is in line with the MovieLabs spec.
• 4K UHD & HDR SLAs: We’ve updated our SLAs due to longer encoding times for these formats.
• Foreign Language Content Onboarding: Added instructions for onboarding Foreign Language Content that is intended for customers that don’t speak the primary language of any given territory (i.e. Spanish content in the US).

• Support for EMA Avails v1.7.2 and v1.7.3. A new Content Rights section makes it easier to understand Prime Video requirements regarding content rights associated to delivered video content.
• Prime Video no longer supports communication of content rights via metadata. All content submissions must have associated content rights delivered via approved EMA avails. For current requirements, see the Content Rights section.
• New online Support section. Archived versions of the Prime Video Content Guide are available in PDF format in the Content Guide Archive.
• New field lists for EMA Avails, MMC, MEC, Amazon XML, and Amazon XLS specs. These define each field and indicate whether each field is required, optional, or not used by Prime Video.